Designed to be used alone or as a digital companion to your webOS phone, you won't miss that important call or SMS message because they can be answered and viewed right on your HP TouchPad webOS, tablet. Also, HP's exclusive new touch-to-share feature will let you touch an enabled webOS phone to your TouchPad to share web URLs.

The HP TouchPad is scheduled to be available in the summer. Exact pricing and availability will be announced at a later date.

TouchPad also features a webOS communication suite powered by HP Synergy that keeps you connected and creative, making all of your communications simpler, richer and in your control. It's a complete solution, including email, instant messaging, contacts, calendar, videos, and a front-facing camera for video calling. Connected photo albums make it easy to share and view your pictures directly from popular services such as Facebook, Snapfish and Photobucket. It works seamlessly with TouchPad's user interface for a natural and efficient experience.

At home, whether you're watching TV, relaxing on the sofa, at the kitchen table or in bed, you can check in with friends, surf the web, play games or read a book, magazine or newspaper.

Amazon.com announced today that it will launch a free Kindle app for HP webOS tailored for TouchPad that will give you access to more than 810,000 titles from Amazon's Kindle Store. You also can subscribe to popular magazine titles, such as Time, Sports Illustrated, Fortune and People, and download movies and TV shows through the HP Movie Store.

The TouchPad music app lets you transfer and play all your favorites from your personal music collection.

You can read and write email, view your work and personal inboxes together, or easily toggle between them. Integrated messaging conveniently combines all your text messages, picture messages and IM conversations with one person into a single view, and you can connect through SMS, Google Talk, AIM and Yahoo! Messenger.

TouchPad's virtual full QWERTY keyboard includes a number row, which reduces keyboard switching, making typing easy and fast. It powers on instantly and brings you back to exactly where you left off, whether you were in the middle of composing an email, playing a game or browsing a web page. With webOS true multitasking, it's like you never left.

For maximum productivity, HP is working with Quickoffice to include the Quickoffice Connect Mobile Suite, which lets you view and edit documents, such as Microsoft Word and Excel. It also comes with VPN support to connect to corporate networks.

TouchPad has built-in HP Touchstone technology for easy charging, so it's compatible out of the box with the HP Touchstone for TouchPad (sold separately), and you can charge in either portrait or landscape mode, even without removing the TouchPad case (sold separately). The webOS Exhibition feature lets you run applications designed specifically for Touchstone. Set your TouchPad on Touchstone and Exhibition launches automatically, showing you anything from today's agenda to a slideshow of your photos.(13)

TouchPad is one of three webOS products announced today (see separate announcements for HP Veer and HP Pre3). Each product plays a distinct role in the growing webOS family, designed to meet the varying needs of customers in a rapidly evolving mobile landscape.